E-Murdoch has a Future

And other financial funnies

Common Topics

Bath-based consumer techie publisher The Future Network Plc has appointed Elisabeth Murdoch to the Board as a non-executive director with immediate effect. Murdoch, 32, joins the Future Board after four years at British Sky Broadcasting, most recently as Managing Director of Sky Networks.

365 Corporation Plc is to acquire the entire issued share capital of Phones Express for up to £3.1 million in cash and shares, the new outfit said today. The acquisition is being made as part of 365's ongoing development of its mobile telecoms operations in both its business and consumer Divisions.

Networking company Spirent (formerly Bowthorpe) is doing a £284 million share swap with IP specialists Zarak Systems. The move will allow Spirent to get a further hold on the voice-over-IP market. Spirent joined the FTSE100 last week.

Vodafone is to sell its Italian telecommunications subsidiary Infostrada for £8 billion. The company was inherited when Vodafone bought Mannesmann earlier this year, and CEO Chris Gent was considering floating it. However, it now looks as though a sale is on the cards, possibly to Italian telecoms company Wind (consortium of France Telecom and Enel). BT was thought to be interested through its subsidiary Albacom, but that's a no-go now due to its heavy debt.

Sport4cast, an online horseracing predictor, is to float next month at £10 million. The company's chairman reckons there is nothing to stop it becoming the market leader.

ITNet has announced its six-month results. The company, which is "one of the leading suppliers of IT and business process services", saw a 24 per cent increase in turnover period-on-period (to £75.7 million). It has also gone acquisition crazy recently, so profits figures are given "pre-goodwill amortisation". With this is mind, operating profit has gone up 22 per cent to £4.9 million, gross profit up 5.5 per cent to £4.4 million and eps up 12 per cent to 4.7p.

British-based film site - in-movies.co.uk - is currently negotiating to acquire the content and various assets of pop.com, which went